University-industry collaboration in the automotive, biotechnology, and electronics firms in Malaysia

This paper seeks to examine existing explanations of drivers of university-industry collaboration. The Probit regression results support prevailing theory on the importance of R&D intensity, partner diversity and access to wider channels of information matter for university-industry collaboration. However, categorizing size as a dichotomous dummy variable of SME and large firms showed an inverse relationship, while actual employment size was not statistically significant. Size was inversely correlated with universityindustry collaboration. Separate Probit estimations for the specific industries of automotive, biotechnology and electronics indicate the following as the important drivers. First, R&D intensity, importance of university as a source of knowledge and age were important in automotive firms. Second, R&D intensity, channels of R&D information and R&D partner diversity were important in biotechnology firms. Third, the channels of R&D information and R&D partner diversity were important in electronics firms. Size was statistically significant in automotive and electronics firms but the coefficients were negative when a dummy was used and not statistically significant when the actual employment was used. Closer examination showed higher university-industry collaboration means among medium size firms.